Transcript

Berkeley Lab CAG Meeting - January 13, 2026

From Berkeley Lab · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 18 min · 13,484 words · 129 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Berkeley Lab CAG Meeting - January 13, 2026", an episode of Berkeley Lab published January 13, 2026 (1 h 18 min, about 13,484 words). It mentions 18 people, works and ideas, including Cyclron Road, Ellen Ford, Berkeley Lab, Carla Penzon, Melanie Sunsting.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Department of Energy, Michael Brandt, Duke Energy, Cyclron Road
  2. – 20:00: Berkeley Lab, Cyclron Road, Ellen Ford, Melanie Sunsting
  3. – 30:00: Cyclron Road, Activate, Berkeley Lab, Department of Energy
  4. – 40:00: Cyclron Road, Activate, Carla Penzon, Duke Energy
  5. – 50:00: Duke Energy
  6. – 1:00:00: Cyclron Road, Duke Energy, Activate, Patricia McNeel
  7. – 1:10:00: Cyclron Road, Activate, Department of Energy, Duke Energy
  8. – 1:17:46: Cyclron Road, Duke Energy, Activate

Notable quotes from "Berkeley Lab CAG Meeting - January 13, 2026"

  • Were having our November meeting and asking about potential topics to feature during this year. And so we're starting off with Cyclron Road this evening and we'll get into that…
    about Cyclron Road · at
  • Where that new bridge was put in, which really was seismically needed, we had the Department of Energy had funded us to upgrade our Strawberry Gate. So, that's the gate that's…
    about Department of Energy · at
  • Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the rain. so I believe in the last CAG meeting, Michael had talked about how we had some blocked storm drains. So this is sort of right…
    about Michael Brandt · at
  • What we were calling lab day. and that was on December 9th, and that's where, UC President James Milikin came and he came with the search advisory committee. that has members…
    about James Milikin · at
  • You. This is my first time getting to visit, the CAG meeting. my name is Melanie Sunsting. I'm the program manager for the Cyclron Road Lab Embedded Entrepreneurship Program. I understand that, you had a presentation on our program back in.
    about Melanie Sunsting · at
  • So, I'm sure you're all well aware of this being part of the KAG, but the Berkeley Lab has a lot to offer these innovators to attract them to want to join Berkeley Lab as a…
    about Berkeley Lab · at
  • So as Melanie said, I'm a current fellow of the activate program. my name is Carla Penzon. I'm also the CEO of expand power. where our vision for the world is to have a distributed resilient decentralized grid.
    about Carla Penzon · at
  • Sure it can actually flip. Cool. the scalpel production of Aerogel. So, Aerogel has historically been considered a very high value but high cost material. So aerogel is above…
    about Patricia McNeel · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Ellen Ford — Person · Main speaker (operations update) · 2 mentions · first at
    Delivers the lab’s operations update covering budget outlook, facilities projects, director search status, and a food bank fundraiser; also noted as retiring soon after a long tenure.
    Think he probably just landed, so he wasn't able to make it tonight. And asked me to give you all an operations update of what's happening at the laboratory.
  • Carla Penzon — Person · Guest presenter (Cyclotron Road fellow / startup CEO) · 2 mentions · first at
    Introduced as a current fellow and CEO presenting Expand Power’s solid-state transformer approach to grid modernization and transformer supply constraints.
  • Melanie Sunsting — Person · Main speaker (program overview) · 1 mention · first at
    Explains the Cyclotron Road Lab Embedded Entrepreneurship Program model, history, partnerships (including Activate), scale/metrics, and introduces current fellows presenting their companies.
  • Patricia McNeel — Person · Guest presenter (Cyclotron Road fellow / startup CEO) · 1 mention · first at
    Presents Westwood Aerogel’s approach to lower-cost aerogel manufacturing and applications (notably battery thermal runaway barriers), and discusses graduating from the program and moving to a new facility.
  • Michael Brandt — Person · Referenced leader (usual operations presenter) · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited as the usual operations update presenter who is traveling; also referenced for prior meeting updates (storm drains/rain) and prior engagement with the group.
  • James Milikin — Person · Referenced executive (director search visit) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the UC President who visited the lab with the search advisory committee as part of the Berkeley Lab director search process.

Companies & orgs

  • Cyclron Road — Company · Business focus · 17 mentions · first at
    A lab embedded entrepreneurship program that supports early-stage hard tech startups with access to national lab facilities and expertise.
  • Berkeley Lab — Company · Headquarters · 7 mentions · first at
    A national laboratory managed by the University of California for the Department of Energy, hosting the Cyclron Road program.
  • Activate — Company · Partner · 12 mentions · first at
    A nonprofit partner that runs a parallel startup innovation fellowship program alongside Cyclron Road.
    Early stage innovators that national labs don't excel at. And so very early on we partnered with a nonprofit called Activate, which is also headquartered in the East Bay in the Berkeley area.
  • Department of Energy — Company · Funding and support · 6 mentions · first at
    Provides funding and support for the Cyclron Road program and other initiatives at Berkeley Lab.
  • Duke Energy — Company · Potential customer · 12 mentions · first at
    A utility company that has shown interest in the solid state transformer technology developed by Expand Power.
    Package that included their compromised position on funding for the Department of Energy. So it was actually positive news. the bill includes 8.4 billion for the Office of Science.
  • Aspen Aerogel — Company · Competitor · 2 mentions
    A competitor in the aerogel market, mentioned in the context of Westward Aerogel's business strategy.
    Growing market. That's where you really see the scale. And the comparison in terms of competition is so like our big competitor for the US, they're called Aspen Arrow Gel and…
  • UC Santa Cruz — Company · Alma mater · 1 mention · first at
    The university where Melanie Sunsting, the program manager for Cyclron Road, studied.
    Information about my background. I'm a Bay Area native. I grew up here in San Pablo and then panol. went to school at UC Santa Cruz and came to Berkeley Lab around 2004 for…
  • MIT — Company · Alma mater · 1 mention · first at
    The university where Carla Pinsen, a Cyclron Road fellow, studied.
    Trajectory. So my background is in power electronics electrical engineering. I did my undergrad and my masters at MIT. I had been exploring modular power electronics while I…
  • Sonos — Company · Former employer · 1 mention · first at
    The company where Carla Pinsen worked before joining the Cyclron Road program.
    Beneficial for the grid for transformers. And so, I dropped out of the PhD. I got a job to bootstrap myself at Sonos. my first full job out of college, I was a lead power…
  • GM — Company · Potential customer · 1 mention · first at
    An automotive company that could benefit from the aerogel thermal barriers for battery packs.
    Into a supply chain is we can either interact with the original equipment manufacturer themselves. So people like Volkswagen or Nissan or GM or we can also interact with the…

Places & events

  • Alama County — Place · Beneficiary · 1 mention · first at
    One of the counties benefiting from the winter food bank challenge organized by Berkeley Lab.
    And then this is just we wanted to say a little bit about our winter food bank challenge. So, we've been doing this for the last six years and it's raising money for both Alama County and Contraosta County food banks.
  • Contraosta County — Place · Beneficiary · 1 mention · first at
    One of the counties benefiting from the winter food bank challenge organized by Berkeley Lab.
    And then this is just we wanted to say a little bit about our winter food bank challenge. So, we've been doing this for the last six years and it's raising money for both Alama County and Contraosta County food banks.

Full transcript with timestamps

Very good. Well, uh, we will move right into our operations update. We have Ellen Ford, who's a deputy chief operating officer for the lab. Uh, normally we have Michael Brandt, but he's uh, I guess on a trip, a business uh, operations. So, we uh, will proceed with Ellen and then from there we'll go on to series of presentations here about Cyclron Road. And I would just note that was a talked about idea for this coming year for 2026, the year we're now in. We were having our November meeting and asking about potential topics to feature uh during this year. And so we're starting off with Cyclron Road this evening and we'll get into that here momentarily. But let's first hear from Ellen regarding an update on operations at the lab. So Ellen, it's all yours.

All right. Actually, if you don't mind stopping your screen share, I will pull up Alex. Awesome. Thanks, Daniel. All righty.

All right. Good evening, everybody. It's been a while since I've been to a CAG meeting, and I think I've met most of you. Uh, but it's good to be here tonight. Yeah. As as Daniel said, Michael is traveling to DC. Um, and I think he probably just landed, so he wasn't able to make it tonight. And asked me to give you all an operations update of what's happening at the laboratory. So um uh, maybe next slide. Jen. Jen's helping me. She's my friend tonight helping me with slides. Um so we'll talk a little bit about what's happening with the with the budget um and the update there and how that's impacting the laboratory.

I'll give an infrastructure and facilities update. Um tell you a little bit about what's happening with the new lab director search and where that stands. And then kind of a feel-good moment at the end about uh our winter food bank um results. So we have a a competition each year. talk a little bit about that. So, as far as the government uh budget goes and its implications for the laboratory. So, I know that Michael um met with you uh before the holiday break. Um there was a lot of uncertainty. There continues to be, but things that seem to be moving in the right direction. Um back in the summer and fall, we had planned um at the laboratory to do um some reductions in force um mostly in the operations area in preparation for what we thought would be fairly deep funding cuts um for research. And um so we sort of had this balance that we had to do of, you know, we wanted to do some cuts but not too

deep um and wanted to be able to wait and see what would happen with our with our um with our research portfolio. So last week we learned that the House and the Senate Appropriations Committees released a three bill um fiscal year 26 package that included their compromised position on funding for the Department of Energy. So uh it was uh actually positive news. Um the bill includes 8.4 billion um for the Office of Science. That's a 1.9% increase of what we thought it would be. Um there is a 10% decrease for energy efficiency and renewable energy. It's down to 3.1 billion. But the good news is we thought it was going to be 40%. Um

so um and in general when we look at at at at sort of program by program um it doesn't go too deeply into programs but but most of our priorities were funded at levels that we expected them to be. Um so we are not anticipating at this time that we would need to do more cuts. There may be isolated um cuts in certain um programs but um I think it would be very limited going forward. Um so next slide. Okay. So um uh a little bit of infrastructure update here. Um so right now um so what we what we are calling collaboration commons our welcome center is really evolving up in the top up top left I think you've probably seen this image before um that's what's in it's envisioned to look like uh in the lower left is where it was in November I think you saw at the last KAG meeting and then where it currently is is on the right so that white skin that you see on the on the building is really um to help

weatherproof it um but as a reminder of what's going in here. So, cafeteria is one of the things that we're very excited about as a laboratory community. Um, but it's not just that. It's a conference center um that'll have a lot of meeting spaces. We're putting our health services center in there and we're also putting security um services in there. So, badging it will also have a transportation hub unit which so it'll really be it really will effectively be um a welcome center for the building at the heart of our campus and we're very much looking forward to it. Um right now it's scheduled for planned opening in the spring or summer of 2027. So um it continues to stay on schedule and we're um we're uh we're really excited about this um for lots of reasons. I actually have not and it's made a lot of progress recently. I haven't seen it since a couple of months before. I haven't done a tour since a couple of months before

the holiday break. And uh um I'm going to be going on a tour on Wednesday. I understand it's made a lot of progress. So that's exciting for us. We're uh very much looking forward to that and are happy with it the way that it's progressing. Next slide. Um so another project that we have going is you know you'll remember that we the Centennial um bridge was replaced um and that was that was a an investment by um uh UC as well was managing and was managing that project. So, right there where that new bridge was put in, which really was seismically needed, um we um had the Department of Energy had funded us to upgrade our Strawberry Gate. So, uh that's the gate that's right below um Centennial Bridge on Centennial. And um it really gave us with the renewal of that bridge and then moving the bridge over, it really gave us some more room to be able to make that a much safer entry for our employees so that um it

cars wouldn't get as backed up. And it also enabled us it's enabling us to really, you know, make that more of a state-of-the-art um uh entrance to the laboratory. So that's been an ongoing project. Um, you can see what it looked like on the left, what it currently looks like with all the scaffolding, but it's uh we're actually it's it's we started work on it in November 24. So, it's been over a year and we're um right now it looks like we'll be opening at some point in February, mid to late February, and we're excited for that to happen. And the people who work on that side of our campus are very excited for that to happen so they don't have to come in through Blackberry or Grizzly and make their way um over to that canyon.

Um, next slide. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the rain. Um, so I believe in the last CAG meeting, Michael had talked about how we had some blocked storm drains. So this is sort of right above where the Greek theater is um below our our big horseshoe parking lot outside of the gate. There were some part there were some clogged drains there. We had a big overflow. Um that was then um fixed. Um so they fixed the drainage situation. and they replaced all the waddles there um and and put in um u more effective drainage. I think Michael might have reported in the last meeting that it worked uh that we had no issues with the last rains, but we've had a really unprecedented amount of rain um in this last uh couple of months. So, you know, we've had 17.86 in of rain between October and January 7th. So, it's a lot. It's 148% of normal. Um we know this because we've got a um we've got a weather tower um

that's right above the ALS and we take measurements. Um so uh it's been holding and unbelievably you know we had that huge rainstorm that felt like it went on for days and days and days cuz it did um at the end of the year at the beginning of this year uh calendar year and uh we didn't have we had one roof leak that was it which was really kind of amazing. I think that might be a record for the lab. So, uh, we're pleased that that those improvements are continuing to hold on. So, now I'll talk a little bit about the laboratory director search. So, Mike is, um, planning to leave in June of this year, and a search has been ongoing for his replacement. Um, and, uh, we had what we were calling lab day. Um, and that was on December 9th, and that's where, um, UC President James Milikin came and he came with um, the search advisory committee. that has members of the UC regents, faculty members from

campus, Berkeley lab scientists are on that committee and there are other UC leaders that are on that committee. And so they visited the lab. Um they spent a full day and the purpose was really to meet with um we have six areas at the laboratory of research and then there's the operations area as part of that as well to really meet with lab leadership um at the area um lab director level as well as the division director level to understand you know what it is um that would really help the laboratory um what are the qualities that would we would really want to have in our next leader.

Um Mike has been just such an incredible leader for the laboratory and helping us really, you know, stay on track with the mission. And so they had very in-depth conversations. I think it was a long day. Um there were a lot of people that that sort of cycled through that meeting. Uh but I think they really learned a lot. Um and right now they're hoping to have um a recommendation sometime during the spring um or early summer um for uh the regions to consider. Next slide. Um, and then this is uh this is just we wanted to say a little bit about our our winter food bank challenge. So, we've been doing this for the last six years and it's raising money for both Alama County and Contraosta County food banks.

Um, this year we were able to raise almost $160,000 and so in the last six years we're we're coming very close to a million which is really really exciting. Um, and uh, since that, you know, since we since the inception, it's really equated to being able to provide 1.8 million meals. So, we're very proud of that. It's something that we're looking forward to continuing as a tradition at the lab. Um, and wanted to be able to let this uh, this forum know about our progress there. So, that's everything that I had. Any questions for me?

Excellent. Thank you very much, Ellen. Uh, we have plenty of time here. We're moving well on our agenda. So, Marcos, did you have a hand up?

Yeah. So, um I mean, we get rain totals for the Bay Area and things of that nature. Um in my neighborhood, we're up on the hill. We don't have a really great way of translating like what our rain totals are versus what we get on the hill. So, um is it easy? Do do you guys have like a percentage that you maybe know about like relative to the the the flats and the recorded number for the city versus what you get up on the lab and is there a delta?

You know, I don't know the answer to that question. I mean, we could certainly find out um and see what they're what they're tracking uh um in addition to, you know, what sort of, you know, comparisons they're doing in addition to what we get at the laboratory. Um but I don't know the answer to that, but I could certainly find out.

Okay. Yeah. because it it's um it's one of those things that's like if it's linear, it's not such a big deal. But if it's nonlinear, it you know, we're we're noticing like some of the as we come down through the hill, the I if it's nonlinear and the delta's nonlinear and it it it spreads wider um during certain part of the season. Um we are noticing like certain areas just kind of get really over inundated uh below our hill. I'm just wondering if you guys see something of similar of that nature and and and we're interested in trying to help control and find those mechanism stuff. U but it's it's difficult to kind of go off of when you see the total down there and then you've got a bucket out in front of your house that's like four times that amount, right? You know,

and and that's something that that a lot of people here are kind of interested in.

Okay. Yeah, we could certainly take a look at that and report out next time. Thanks.

Okay, great. Thanks, Marcos. any other uh questions, comments on Ellen's uh presentation?

So, I just if there aren't any comments, I just wanted to jump in really quickly. Um, and Ellen, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but Ellen has been with the lab for 24 incredible years. She is sadly retiring uh in March. And while I'm super excited for Ellen, I'm not sure what the lab is going to do without her. She's been just an incredible uh incredible person to to work with. and I just wanted to say thank you to to you for everything that you've done over the last 24 years for the lab.

So, thanks. I mean, I have to say the lab I I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to be able to contribute to the lab's mission over these last 24 years. It's been an incredible experience and I'm I'm grateful and I'm I'm it's very bittersweet for me. So, I'm glad this meeting is happening this week and not last week because that was when I announced and I might not be able to get together right now. Excellent. Well, it's fortunate that you were able to fill in for Michael and we get to see you as you are uh preparing the next stage of your career.

That's great. Thank you. Okay. Well, we'll move on to our next presentation then. Melanie Son Sting is a program manager with Cyclron Road and we're going to feature that topic this evening. So, uh, let's go to Melanie to take it away.

Hello everyone. It is a pleasure to meet you. This is my first time getting to visit, um, the CAG meeting. Um, my name is Melanie Sunsting. I'm the program manager for the Cyclron Road Lab Embedded Entrepreneurship Program. Um, I understand that, um, you had a presentation on our program back in 2019. So, some of you might be familiar with this, but I'm going to do just a a highle overview in case anybody wants a refresher or wasn't able to um be at that past meeting. And so, I'll I'll share some slides, but um before I start that, I'll just give you a little bit of information about my background. Um I'm a Bay Area native. I grew up here in San Pablo and then panol. went to school at UC Santa Cruz and came to Berkeley Lab around 2004 for what I thought was going to be a gap year before I went on to um you know do maybe some counseling or social work was sort of what I was interested in originally. But I fell in

love with Berkeley Lab and the lab's mission and especially the people that I met at the lab. Um super inspired by the scientific work um that the community does. And so I stayed on and have slowly been working my way through a number of different operational support um positions starting at um the material sciences division, moving on to support some of our other uh hub-based programs. You may remember um the joint center for artificial photosynthesis um and and so I've been really fortunate to be involved in some of the startups of some of the um new initiative programs happening at the lab. So in 2015 um we had a pilot program that we called Cypotron Road that started and I got to um join that team when it was first just a few people on it and I'm the person who's been with the program for the longest. So for the last 10 years I've been with the program um and it's just been a real pleasure to um

have my career grow alongside such an amazing program. So with that let me share my slides. Okay. And let's do a slideshow. Does that look okay to everybody?

That's good. All right. So um Cyclone Road which originated as a pilot program, it is a um program that is designed to take early stage um hard techch startup founders embed them at the national lab uh providing them with access to our facilities, our expertise um and in in most cases uh DOE funding but sometimes some additional funding sources from some of our partners. And um we've had the DOE partnership since the first year in 2015, but the program would not have gotten off the ground without um really phenomenal um belief and leadership from the uh the lab directorate in helping to also give some uh seed funding to pilot this program. And um in the last 10 years, the program has been successful enough that not only are we continuing to go strong and have a very vibrant um alumni community, but the program has um been duplicated in a number of different sites at other national labs and in

other community areas. So there's been a lot of validation for this model for uh embedding startup entrepreneurs that need hard tech support at a national lab and beyond. So, um there is a website there that I can drop into the chat before we um we leave the program or if Jen wants to drop it in there if you want to see um a little bit more breadth of what our alumni um participants have done over the last 10 years. You can read up on the various fellows and their um technologies. My hope is that you are going to get to hear from two of our current um participants uh today. I know we have one of them online, one of them I've told her we are ahead of schedule so she'll be joining us too hopefully.

Um and so hopefully you'll have some questions for them. Um they're they're really been um making great strides in their in their technical progress as well as growing as entrepreneurs and leaders. And that's kind of one of the the secret sauce um elements of the program while we are focused on connecting these um these participants with technology. support and we are hoping that their technologies that they're trying to commercialize are going to be fruitful and have the impact that um you know people may predict that they'll have. The the true specialness of the program that we found is that it is helping to train um scientific researchers with the expertise to tackle these technology problems to become stronger leaders to take the initiative in our society to um to try and tackle these problems. uh even if they started on a small scale, hopefully giving them the support through programs like this

one um to really get some traction and and move forward. And if not in the technology that they join this program, then hopefully their their leadership skills will allow them to make an impact in whatever their next project is. So um started out with um the founder who was Alon Gore um had come out of his uh graduate and PhD studies at University of California had been at Berkeley lab went off founded two battery um companies had a lot of experiences in how that doesn't work so great with um a lot of the resources that were available at the time um and then picked up a position at the at the time newly um started ARPA program and really got to see what it was like if you could put government um resources and funds behind some of these promising technologies. But he still recognized there was a gap. um people that were eligible for the RPE usually were later stage, had a more wellestablished um

company. and he saw along with a number of other colleagues in the DOE and at Berkeley Lab that there was this population of people that potentially could be um led to become technology entrepreneurs who were instead because of lack of resources and a lack of a path to do that were instead going into other parallel fields um that maybe wouldn't have as um near-term an impact as they might otherwise hope. So the experiment was the cyclron road program which became the lab embedded entrepreneurship program. Um it's to facilitate the translation of hard science into positive societal impact and hopefully to allow these innovators to bring their um their technology forward to a viable first product.

Part of the storyline is that as we um stood up this lab embedded entrepreneurship program, LEAP, um we also discovered that there were a lot of things that we would like to offer these early stage innovators that national labs don't excel at. And so very early on we partnered with a nonprofit called Activate, which is also headquartered in um the East Bay in the Berkeley area. and um they have become a keystone partner in that um they run a parallel 2-year um startup innovation fellowship program that's handinhand in ours. So we've built our programs alongside each other and um we for the most part support the same innovators at our Berkeley location.

So, I'm sure you're all well aware of this being part of the KAG, but the uh the Berkeley Lab has a lot to offer these um innovators to attract them to want to join Berkeley Lab as a place to um move their technology forward, including um the five DOE national user facilities, additional unique research centers, and um a lot of just phenomenal expertise. So, what our program does is we try and help curate all of the resources, which can be um sometimes hard to navigate for people that aren't familiar and already embedded within the lab. We give them a 2-year time frame and we work to um to help them if they're interested in a user facility to help um help them engage with those uh facilities as well as other principal investigators at the lab that may not normally work with um with external companies. we will help do a mentoring matchmaker depending on the company's needs and the interests of our PIs.

And what the program offers um with support both from Department of Energy, Berkeley Lab, and our nonprofit partner, Activate, is a 2-year fellowship. So, it's not an incubator or an accelerator, although sometimes people call it that, and there is overlap in those offerings. We call it a fellowship because we want people to come in to the lab and put all of their time and their effort into this particular project. It's not meant to be a short-term temporary stepping stone. It is meant to be a very hightouch um integrated and embedded uh two-year program that's both going to help them move their technology forward and provide them with the resources to become an entrepreneurial leader as well. So they get um up around $100,000 per year in a stipen um and then travel insurance, health insurance, relocation funds. The idea being to level the playing field on who can be um eligible for the program to try and reach as many

uh potential uh hard- techch entrepreneurs as possible and make it so that they can focus on this um this project without having to have either um existing funds of their own or um another full-time job while they're doing it. um we pro we connect them with both the expert um scientific community at Berkeley Lab as well as our regional partners such as UC Berkeley and Silicon Valley um folks and a lot of the other um innovation support systems that we have in the Bay Area. Um we also connect them through activate with um additional state and federal um funders and contacts as well as philanthropic um and and and regional um supporters. So we're trying to be able to reach the widest array of innovators and technologies um as possible. And we found that by having this sort of um connected across various um organizations, we were able to build a pretty robust um network for them so that as things eb

and flow each year, we're able to try and um meet as many people's needs and um get the best innovators into the program. That said, it is a very small program. We only support about 8 to 10 new fellows per year. The reason we've kept it at that is because um we found that that was the highest number that we could support each year and still have the high level of um connectivity, mentorship. Um we do quarterly board meetings with them. We do um weekly content programming and so in order to have the level of um dedicated uh sort of bespoke support for each of them, we want to keep that number small. We also have um some diversity built into it. um across the it's not just the one cohort going through two years, they overlap by a year. So each year one uh cohort is graduating, one cohort is halfway through the program and one cohort is coming in. And that connectivity has allowed the alumni um group to really

become an unexpected um strength of the program where they're not only able to tap into the other 8 to 16 people that are going through the program with them but potentially you know 123 people that we've supported over the last uh 10 years. So what we have found is that this fellowship works. Um, since 2015, as I said, we'd had 123 fellows come through the program who have founded 92 science-based companies. And, um, just recently, we surpassed the 4 billion um, metric in um, the company's follow- on funding. So, what we're finding is that companies that get into the program and complete the program continue to be successful um, to a large degree once they leave the program. and um you know the the societal dollars into the program uh are are heavily leveraged in a positive way with these follow-on funding with belief in these companies and the impact that they're going to have.

Uh once we saw and the DOE saw that this was um a really viable path forward for some of these that we had very positive um feedback from the participants and from the community that was um helping us support them. The DOE decided to expand the model and there are now three additional laboratory laboratory embedded entrepreneurship program LEAP at three other uh national labs and I have to update this I know that some of our names have changed um but we have at Argon National Lab at Oakidge National Lab and the um National Lab of the Rockies. So um I will share these slides with with Jen to be shared out with you afterwards. And if you want to visit any of those sister sites, um we work closely across the the four national labs that are supporting these innovators. And we've found that to be a really um strong point for the program also. And then on our nonprofit partner side with Activate, they founded their

initial fellowship program in Berkeley alongside ours. And they too had the same goal where they want to make the greatest impact as possible. and um their program is modeled after the exact same uh format that we have. And so in order to reach more people instead of having larger numbers in each program, the model has been to uh increase the sites that it's at. So while the LEAP programs such as Cyclron Road are always embedded at a national lab, only the Activate Berkeley um fellowship program is uh partnered with us at a national lab. They have an additional five sites.

1 2 3 4. Yeah, there's a new one. um five sites that are regional partners that are not national labs but some of the participants in those other states also um access national labs or universities etc. So we're trying out a number of different models. The experiment continues. Um different we found different things work better in different communities depending on uh what uh resources are available and we continue to grow and we are really looking forward to uh hoping to see another 10 years of of Cyclron Road and Leap.

I will stop sharing with that and I'm happy to uh answer any questions while I also want to make sure we give a little extra time for my next speaker to come on. She said she's going to come on soon. So, please let me know if you have any questions.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Melanie. Uh we we're certainly uh on and ahead of schedule, so no problem with

I think she's here, so we're good. Yep, I do see her also online. Any questions or follow-ups for Melanie about uh cyclron road activities? Okay, Marcos, go ahead.

All right. Uh simple crucial question and maybe a little bit of overlap um for Ellen. Um so how much of when you're um going through so in the last decade we've been we've been also witnessing like a change of the dynamic from um the the um executive branch in terms of funding. I mean how much is this a part of the picture that that is the cell for the labs to like increase funding or where research can kind of expand? I mean, is this this is a question for either either you Melanie or Ellen is like, is is is this incorporated when we're kind of like trying to do the cell pitch for for for the lab and trying trying to gather resources? I mean, it seems like it's a great way to kind of establish that um like moving forward, we got a growing program that's actually bringing in leverage and expanding expanding um capitalization, which is what a lot of of of what people want to see out of out

of current administration. Well, I can start just by addressing it from the Cyclron Road, you know, point of view. I can't speak for the lab as a whole, but um I can say that our program has continued to be um really well supported uh throughout the last 10 years. Um the the innovations that are coming through are ones that are are very popular um for potential um solutions to common um issues that we're all finding. And so there's just been a lot of um celebration of it and that we've seen that across the the DOE um offices and so we're hoping that that will continue to be uh a highlight and a selling point for our lab and the other labs that have LEAP pro programs.

Yeah. So I mean Cyclron Road was really the first uh program of its kind um and inspired really the spread of it across across the complex. It's not at every single lab um but it is at other labs as well. So I think it's I think it's been very very successful and very well supported.

Yeah, I'll just add uh you know we've we've uh and my colleagues have done this currently since I'm not doing federal relations anymore but we've brought a number of of cyclron road uh fellows to Capitol Hill and members in both the house and the senate both sides of the aisle have really sort of understood the value and the impact of a program like this and we continue to receive really strong support from from folks on the hill. I got to participate in that this year with Jonathan Nurse and a bunch of fellows and it was so much fun. It really was um invigorating to have so much support.

Okay, any other questions or follow-up items? I did have just a question, Melanie. There was activate Boston, Activate New York, and then there was activate anywhere. What What was that one referring to? Yeah. So the you know the model while the programs offer almost the same um kind of overview template um of what we want to offer the the fellows and how we do it there is the difference where activate is really focusing on the entrepreneurial support whereas the LEAP programs are really focusing on the technical mentorship and technical support. And so as Activate has expanded out their communities, since they are not heavily embedded in one particular physical institution, but they're allowing their other non-Berkeley participants to sort of choose their own um support areas, they determined, well, you know, in addition to having these these regional hubs, we should probably have um a activate anywhere remote

community, which allows people that are maybe commercial trying to commercialize in smaller rural communities in states that don't have access to um large laboratory infrastructure. It kind of spreads out that ability again. And so it just gives more options to the innovators to sort of choose their own adventure and how they're going to move this forward.

Okay. All right. That answers that. Thank you. Any other points for Melanie? I'm just going to shout out Melanie actually really quickly who is missing a class this evening to actually give this presentation. So thanks Melanie for making the time to do this.

Yeah, it's fun. All right. Thank you again. Thank you very much Melanie. appreciate your presentation this evening. Thank you very much.

All right. Oh, may I introduce Carla? Yes, go ahead, please. Okay. Sorry to step on your toes there, Daniel. Um, I would like to introduce our fellow Carla Pinsen from um, Expand Power. Um, she is one of our teams that is halfway through the program. So, she's been in it a little over a year and still has some runway ahead of her. And um I know that Carla is feeling maybe a little bit under the weather, so I don't know if you're going to share your your your video. Yay. Hi, Carla. So good to see you.

Hi. I will pass the mic. Welcome to introduce yourself and share your screen. Thank you so much.

Sounds good. Thanks, Melanie. Um okay, can everyone sh see my screen? It's coming up. Yes, we can see it. Good. Looks good.

Awesome. Um, so as Melanie said, I'm a current fellow of the activate program. Uh, my name is Carla Penzon. I'm also the CEO of expand power. Uh, where our vision for for the world is to have a distributed resilient decentralized grid that we want to push through using new types of power electronics and something called a solid state transformer. So, I'll start first by just talking about my company um and then give a little bit more context about how the company was formed and how valuable this the Cyclron Road program has been.

Um, sorry. So, we're at a really crazy time in the world of electrical infrastructure right now where uh the the prices for transformers have increased at least 80% in the last few years. data center growth is ridiculous and at levels that we couldn't have imagined and we installed over 500 gawatts of DC uh and inverterbased resources on the grid alone last year which if you had asked us several years ago if this is what was going to happen uh we would have laughed at you. So really an unprecedented time um where we're hitting this inflection point and there's many new sources and loads in the grid that we couldn't have imagined and we just simply don't have the power electronics and the infrastructure to really keep up. The grid that we need looks fundamentally different from the grid of today. It's very scary issue to to be in very scary world. Um the transformer is the most critical piece of the grid. This is the

transformer. You might have seen it outside of a Walmart, um, shopping center, outside of a factory or a data center, for example. The technology hasn't changed in decades, in centuries, really. It's just a piece of metal immersed in oil with wire wrapped around it. So, it's really not uh suitable for this inflection point that we're starting to see for a few reasons. First, they can only do AC. So they can't do DC power that you would expect in like your Tesla or like a data center or like uh a solar field. You also can't control them. Utilities only know about these transformers breaking because they'll get a call downstream from you like the customer being like, "Hey, where's our power?" Which is uh insane in a world where we increasingly have the ability to monitor and understand assets. And on top of that, you just can't get these transformers. You used to be get them in a few weeks and now

we're seeing lead times of over two to three years from China or Korea or other places that uh might have national security and national energy implications. So so many issues that we're seeing with these with these transformers and our technology and the company that we're building essentially aims to solve these issue. This is what our first product would look like. Um we're building something called a solid state transformer that takes away all of these major pain points. So first we can do both AC and DC. So we can provide load to like your standard house but we can also provide power to uh like a data center or a solar farm. Everything that uh needs power we can provide. At the same time uh we have a dynamic operating range. So we can change how the transformer operates. uh we have smart monitoring can actually understand when it's going to break before it happens and there's a lot of value in being able

to understand what's really happening with it and the last part is that we can manufacture it domestically in the US using a wellestablished supply chain so we do all of that using a proprietary technology which is a combination of a system design new type of semiconductor device highrequency control schemes and a proprietary magnetics configuration This technology can be used not just for sort of the obvious ones that I mentioned like solar, data center, utilities, but for defense applications, electric boats, mining, off-grid. Really the the sky is the limit as we start to see newer and newer types of power electronics on the grid and in every single world uh or every single piece of the world that we that we live in. Um that's me. We have a wonderful CEO uh and a really really amazing team full of power electronics experts, utilities experts, uh previous founders with a lot of experience um pushing first of a kind

technologies out in the world and seeing their impact. So now that I've talked a little bit about like why why are you listening to me and what are we building? Um I'll talk about our trajectory. So my background is in power electronics electrical engineering. I did my undergrad and my masters at MIT. Um I had been exploring modular power electronics while I was there and I decided to do a PhD uh to see if there's anything that could commercialize. So I started a PhD at Stanford uh moved to the better coast. Um, while I was at Stamford, I led a team for this entrepreneurial class and realized that what I have been working on and thinking could be really, really beneficial for the grid for transformers. And so, I dropped out of the PhD. I got a job to bootstrap myself at Sonos. Um, my first full job out of college, I was a lead power electronics engineer. And I did that really just so I could bootstrap this company like what

is now expand. But uh it's really difficult to work two jobs and I wasn't really working too much at Sonos because I really wanted this company to succeed. Um so I applied to the Cyclron Road program twice actually because I saw it as a way to dedicate myself completely to my company to a problem that's so important that needs my full undivided attention and on the the second time I I got in. So uh without cycle bro without this fellowship program there would be no company there would be no expand uh and this problem is so important that affects so many aspects of our life it's crazy we need so many so many people um thinking about and working on it together

and just uh so you guys could see I mentioned that I was working on this uh while bootstrapping myself while I was at Sonos this was a pre-cyclone road expand. It was our lab in the guest bedroom of my 500 foot apartment in Boston, which was uh very I'm not sure my landlord was too happy with me experimenting on high voltage, high power supplies there, but uh very limiting. Um just nights and weekends, I had no money. Progress was so slow. investors are like, "We're not going to take you seriously because you're just some person working on your spare bedroom." Um, it's a really completely different ballgame compared to what actually cyclone run cycle road provided, which is this living stipend focus, so much more progress technically actually having the runway and the cash uh to do something and to make prototypes and to feed myself and to play pay employees.

so much more credibility and investor interest. We went on to win the Americanmade solar prize, the DOE epic white house pitch competition. We have two extra teammates now. We got into some accelerators with utilities. We built our second generation prototype. Um, and we've developed a community and relationships of other founders and mentors who have now become either partners, really strong advocates or or angel investors. So, for me, this program uh has been very life-changing. Can't speak highly enough about it.

Without it, I would still be uh doinking around in my lab trying to get something off the ground and running. So, it's really hard to to start a company, especially by yourself. And uh you as many resources as possible to help is exactly what what we needed. So I'm yeah big fan of the prog of the program. Uh can't say enough about it has uh completely changed my life and set our company and our mission on a very very very uh important path and I I think I'm over time so I want to make sure I'm I'm respectful but uh yeah um open to any questions uh about the company about the cycle road uh whatever is most helpful.

Fantastic. What a great story and uh you're living this out right here in uh in Berkeley. We're really excited about that. So, let's see if there are any follow-up questions for Carla. Any uh uh responses, ideas, uh new potential uh leads on new products to explore.

All right, go ahead, Marcos. Right. Um, just a random question. I because I'm a landlord, I'm always interested in uh what's kind of going on around me. We we've we've housed students in the past and and we've really enjoyed um their company and things of that nature. It was interesting that you mentioned that you know housing and you're starting how difficult of a transition uh you know how are they how is the lab or or the program accommodating that differential or that that delta from coming from different regions and being able to have people housed here. I mean this is a really tough environment for people to transition to. Is it was that a big portion of it or was it kind of taken care of um by the by by the program?

Well, for me it was really just having uh like I was only at Sonos so I could like feed myself. And so for me the biggest benefit of the program is that it gave me something to live off of. And it wasn't just like a stipen like it was like a pretty good stipen for the Bay Area. Um they also gave us a relocation amount. So, that was enough for me to move uh like me, myself, my all my boxes of stuff that I hoarded and probably should have gotten rid of years ago to the Bay Area. Um, and on top of that, the lab space that Cyro Motors provided has been really really beneficial for us too. Like they have a lot of equipment that we need. Just having a space is really cool to show investors or potential partners. Um, and having like the technical staff as well to like bug and like uh take advantage of their resources well if you're nice enough to ask them has just been really really beneficial. I think that uh the the

fellowship program goes above and beyond in what they offer to make it like a like ridiculously simple yes to take. I I I find that really encouraging and I I just think that that's something that can that if somebody's starting a program that they can overlook and is that the the delta of coming here to the Bay Area and being able to hit the ground running, it's really difficult and mainly because you know you're off research of what you want to do is going to be just as difficult as as finding the proper space to to do what you want to do, expand where you want to do and to make that comfortable. just want to, you know, shout out to the program because that's that's a difficult piece to manage and to incorporate that. It really takes a lot of thought um and a lot of thoughtfulness because we are people

and we you know we're not we're not machines and uh it it it really makes me feel I see a lot of positive energy coming from you when you're telling your story. It's really great.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean for me it has been so life-changing that I'm always uh excited to like tell other people about like my story and the program because uh when I look back about who I was like a year and a half ago and who I am now and just like what this company has become, it's such a noticeable inflection point. Um yeah, I don't think that my company would have made it without the cycle road program. like there was just so much resources and like mentorship and community that I needed to to like learn and experience that the program provided and it's just been yeah very very very very positive.

I especially like the community that cyclone road program has set up has been really valuable for me. Um like I bug Patricia all the time for random stuff and she's always been very helpful and uh it's the same with like all the fellows. They're always they've been through it. they know how hard it is and they're always willing to give back and to to help uh the next generation.

I I just think that's awesome. That's awesome. It's so interesting to get the insight from someone such as you as a fellow and your experience and the transformation that you're able to bring about as a result. Thank you. So Sarah has a hand up.

Hi, I'm Sarah Moore. Oh, sorry. Am I Can you hear me now? Sarah Moore. I work for the city of Berkeley. I'm in our planning departments in our office of energy and sustainable development. So, thanks so much for sharing what you are working on too because it's super exciting because I know firsthand that our own city projects have had issues with transformer delays and I know we hear in the planning department about private developments that have issues with transformer delays. So, I know this problem is very very real. Um, and super excited to hear that you're working on an alternative. Um, so I don't have a sense of like are others are others working on this too? Like how how close is this to like do are you working with PG&E? Are they supportive of these efforts? Um what

we have uh like several letters of support from like very big utilities like Duke Energy. Okay,

we've been speaking toce like Southern California, Edison, Dukane Light, Tucson Electric Power, PG&A, we actually haven't spoken to. Um,

they haven't they just haven't like popped up. Uh, doesn't mean that they're not interested in this. Our focus has shifted more recently from utilities to data centers and developers. Just because it's so much easier to sell to. Um, and today we actually signed a letter of intent for uh like a $6 million uh which is a really big deal for us of units that we're going to procure for this potential or we're going to build and make for these potential customer.

So you are to the point of making making units for customers. Uh we're like just before that. We'll pilot it first and then we'll make the the units for them.

Awesome. Awesome. I didn't quite catch your email. It was on the screen a little too briefly. I would love that.

Yeah. Always um very very Oops. Can you guys see it? If anyone wants to talk more about transformers or use cases or um anything about starting a company like an investment cycle, partnerships, whatever, we're always always very very open to it.

Thanks so much. Really appreciate you sharing. Yeah. And Carla, maybe you can put that in the chat as well. That would be excellent. So people can refer to it or maybe hook you up with a potential customer. Who knows?

Yeah, I would appreciate that. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Were there any other follow-up questions uh or comments? Again, let's give uh Carla a round of applause for her presentation and her efforts to uh bring about a whole new company, a new product solution for the energy grid. So, we will go on to the next uh presenter, Dr. Patricia McNeel, who's also a Cyclron Road fellow and is the CEO of Westward Aerogel, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Westwood Aerogel. Yeah, take it away. Go ahead. Thank you. Also rifting off of a little bit what Carla said, um, one of the big advantages I feel like with the Cyclron Road and Activate programs is just the fact that like this is a community of innovators who are doing real hard sciences because you see a lot in the Bay Area, it ends up being more like things software or AI and it's just a whole different ballgame. you're um approaching struggles from a different mindset and the way that you think about scaling technologies and the types of things you need to worry about as you scale a technology are very different.

So that's something that I found extremely valuable both looking to like the mentors within the community, the cohort that was right above me as well as looking to um you know share my information with folks like Carla who are right before me, below me. Um, and for me that kind of also like solidifies um that I know what I'm talking about because then I can basically reiterate that information to Carla and then you can reflect on that and be like, "Oh, I learned something. This is good. The program works."

Yeah, the peer-to-peer support has been phenomenal. I love seeing that happen. All righty then. I will pull up my deck. Unfortunately, it's like built off of my current investor deck, so it's not as fun as I would necessarily like, but we will proceed. Um, so what my company focuses on is the Hold on, let me make sure it can actually flip. Cool. Uh, the scalpel production of Aerogel. So, Aerogel has historically been considered a very high value but high cost material. So aerogel is above 90% air and it is the lightest and most insulating material on Earth. It's been previously used in many aerospace applications. So you're thinking things like Mars rover, Mars Pathfinder. But the reason why it's not more ubiquitous today is because it is incredibly expensive to produce. And if we can drive down the cost of production, what you would then see is an opening of opportunities um including things like um the uh

building envelope. So you're thinking things like insulation material for the building envelope as well as uh different applications that you may not necessarily think of but turn out to be extremely good use cases. And one of those applications I'll talk about later is a cellto cell thermal barrier for battery packs. Um, so this is kind of what the aerogel looks like. It's a very translucent material and it's often described as kind of like a solid smoke type type of material. So you have something that looks basically like a cloud but in a solid form factor.

And some of the utility there and one demonstration I like to do, not necessarily in the lab setting because I've been called out for this, but is the blowtorrch test. So you can see really really thin um pieces of this aerogel material and I can take a little creme brulee blowtorrch and have 100% confidence that I am not going to burn myself in this setting. So what our company focuses on is really on driving down the cost of production. So we see that this material is basically like considered one of the highest value materials. And what needs to happen in order for it to actually make an impact in the world is bringing down the cost of production so that we have a much more assembly line type um production um methodology.

And the what this ends up culminating is in is about a 90% drop in the cost of the material. So the way that we're accomplishing this is by looking into the traditional manufacturing methods and then just fixing all of the problems with those methods. So the transition there is basically like reducing the amounts of expensive equipment, the specialized training and all the bottlenecks that lead to a very high cost of manufacturing. Um and to give a little bit of background as to what the traditional manufacturing method looks like, it's a process that is called uh superc critical drying. So in order for aerogel to have a very high insulation value, you're basically having like a very fluffy type of material. So the way that aerogel is processed is you start, it's almost like a jell-o formation. So you start in a liquid form factor, you have a very porous matrix and then you need to remove the pore fluid from that

matrix without having the pores collapse. So you can imagine also like when you're doing your dishes for example and you put your sponge off to the side, if you're just kind of like leaving it there, it gets all shriveled up and nasty. And that is not good material. What we want to be able to do is remove that liquid without having the pores collapse. And the traditional way to do this is by using a supercritical dryer. The use of a supercritical dryer basically avoids all capillary tension on the pores which are on the nanocale.

So by eliminating capillary tension, you are ensuring that the pores remain nice and fluffy. The drawbacks of this manufacturing method is that you have extremely high capital expenditure and it's very difficult to scale. You're basically imagining taking these little pressure chambers and trying to make them bigger and bigger and bigger. At some point, you're end up in a situation where you just have the basically these pressure bomb situations, which also results in very um very high safety um concerns as well as just high cost of maintenance. And these are all really bad things that we don't want to be doing even though we want our high quality insulation materials.

So what we do is we take the individual steps for aerogel manufacturing and we reduce the cost at each step. So some of the work that we've done while at the cyclron while participating during the cyclron road program is driving down the cost of production just by exploring new precursors. So we kind of had a baseline going into this as to what makes a good high quality aerogel. But we also know that there are different precursors that are much cheaper that can also get good high quality aerogel. And this is the kind of R&D that like an investor doesn't want to hear about it, right? So they're just kind of like, "Oh, you have a thing.

Just roll with the thing. Don't worry about it. You can fix some of these um fundamental problems later." And it's like no, we want to be able to approach it from the perspective of um being placed in a area where we are poised for success. So you kind of want you can see these problems that are going to be downline and you want to be able to approach them before they become really big problems and an investor is not going to care about that. But a space that's kind of really embedded in the academic perspective gives you the opportunity to optimize some of those components.

And then um the key to what we are able to accomplish is really in the solvent extraction part and that is in the drying methodology. So the way that we remove the pore fluid without having the collapse of the pores and while maintaining an extremely nice and fluffy material. So what we do um is a evaporation based process. So because it's just normal evaporation, it's a very coste effective type of process. And the equipment that we use is basically very similar to an environmental chamber. So if you're just imagining a box and you are flowing nitrogen through that box, that's kind of the process that we're doing.

uh some of the special engineering um safeguards that we have in order to maintain the high paracity have to do with the nature of the solvents within the box. So, I almost like to describe this as very similar to like a dehumidification process where you start at an extremely high humidity and then you very slowly ramp that down so that instead of having like that spongy material be shrinking in on itself, it's kind of maintains its nice fluffiness as the solvent is being removed from the system. So, we're using a solvent that has a very low surface tension. So, very low capillary tension on the pores as well as a very high vapor pressure. So we can really control the rate of the drying dynamics on the micro scale as well as on the macro scale. So it's like the combination of these two things is the scientific innovation that goes into our process. Um the really nice thing too about this process is it gives you

the opportunity to recycle things. The opportunity to really engage in the manufacturing process in a circular manner. So then that way you can take what would traditionally have been part of the waist stream and then funnel back that into your process which is something that uh we are really excited that we're able to do with the manufacturing process that we help that we developed. So we have insulation right. So there are many applications where this can be useful and one of the big ticket items is basically in fire prevention for lithium ion batteries. So lithium ion batteries it is absolutely undeniable that they are have a significant part in the way that we are approaching um energy and the way that our modern society is building out its infrastructure.

um they have many significant advantages but one critical hazard associated with lithium ion batteries is this idea of thermal runaway. So if the battery is experiencing a failure mode it's basically overheating and it is eating up the electrolytes. So this electrolyte will catch on fire and you can actually reach temperatures that exceed 1,000° C very easily. And this is why um these are extremely dangerous types of fires. And lithium is also water reactive. So the traditional means of um basically tackling these types of fires are not as effective as they would be for different types of fires. So one method for mitigating this type of risk is by incorporating a barrier that prevents the fire from spreading and propagating to other batteries. So what you want is a small part failure, not a cascading catastrophic failure. And that's really where aerogel can come into play.

So right now the aerogel based thermal barriers that we make can basically place be placed in between cells. Um this is particularly useful for flat form factors and they are highly heat resistant as well as has have an extremely low thermal conductivity. So this gives you the opportunity to prevent the heat from transferring between battery cells. Um our future work is also focused on really driving up that heat resistance component just because uh lithium ion fires can reach 1000C and that's not currently where we're operating. Um however um we are this is good enough to like really get the ball rolling and really get conversations going. And in the customers that we've tried to initiate conversations with one of the number one things that they're worried about is the cost component. So this has a lot of utility within electric vehicles and transportation vehicles in general. They are counting pennies. So this is a

really big piece of equipment and they don't want this individual small part to basically eat up their budget. So the fact that we can offer this type of product which they've already been familiar with because um other companies have kind of um really started. There's uh other companies that are a little more established that use different manufacturing processes, but they've done the heavy lifting in terms of educating these customers. So, that's kind of some of the perspective that we're taking in that when we drive down cost, the customer is already educated.

We are a drop-in solution for what they already know is able to work. Um, and taking that perspective, our long-term customer goals is more on the electric vehicle battery side, but we are cognizant of the fact that data centers are a big selling point right now. And that's something that is a growing industry. Um, and gives us also the opportunity to add the same types of benefits that you can see in electric vehicle battery state. So some of the perspective that we've been taking recently is really looking to the infrastructure associated with data centers which there's um regulations surrounding like fire prevention for a data center and if you have that like fire barrier type product what you can basically do is reduce the footprint for your racks. So, like you could have more racks stacked in a smaller space because you have this fire barrier product that is basically keeping the surrounding

area safe. And that's something that we want to be able to provide and we want to be able to use to help um basically facilitate the trends that we've been seeing today. and then using that as a platform and as a like a testing validation um market then we can expand to the electric vehicle market which is a really high volume but um you're counting pennies kind of market. So that really requires us to be able to meet some sort of economy of scale perspective uh with this material just to kind of give you guys an idea of where we are. Um, so the way that we fit into a supply chain is we can either interact with the original equipment manufacturer themselves. So people like Volkswagen or Nissan or GM or we can also interact with the tier one suppliers. So these are the guys that are making the parts that then get sold to the OEM. Um, and we've had a pretty even spread between conversations

between the two types of groups with a little bit more heavy emphasis on the tier one supplier side just because that's really where the aerogel can fit into that um manufacturing and the basically the supply chain for these types of products. Um but we've also had pretty significant conversations um with like Volkswagen for example and they seem extremely excited to kind of see where the company is going and where this technology um might be able to like fit their future needs. Um just and I mentioned that there are actually in fact other companies that make aerogel. So this is not a novel technology in terms of the material.

This is a novel technology in terms of the way we manufacture it and the way that we can make extremely high quality product affordable so that aerogel can become a ubiquitous insulation material.

Kind of summarizing some of the things that our company focuses on and the overall value ad. Um we want to be able to manufacture the aerogel inhouse. So this gives us the opportunity to um basically um this gives us the opportunity to become the domestic supplier. So we want to be able to be like the number one aerogel people within the US. The way that I kind of try to describe it is you're thinking of a company like a Dowo Chemical for example where they have like a specialty material but then they have all these products associated with that specialty material and it kind of expands outwards from there. Um, another thing that doesn't make it into these slides just because of the nature of where we are politically right now is that I am very interested in ideas of like circular economy and much more regional manufacturing because um that's just like an absolute obvious no-brainer. Like you should be

able to take waist streams that are local and regional to you, take that and put that into your supply chain and incorporate that as part of your manufacturing process. And that's something that I hope to be able to spend more time developing as the company continues to grow. Um, giving a little bit of an overview on our timeline. So, I started the company um, immediately after graduating from UCLA. So, I got my degree in material science um, at UCLA. And in this um for my founder journey, I was very much encouraged by the program director um at RPA to apply to the activate program. So it was kind of like um I had a I had a conversation with the program director I remember and I was telling her that I was interested in exploring um the idea of starting a company and really what it means to be an entrepreneur and she very immediately referred me to the activate program and the cyclron road programs. So that was

kind of more of an eye-opening experience for me in that it's an actual viable option because when you're like in academia, they really only tell you that there's industry and there's academia and you go into a PhD program thinking you're going to go and do research and you're going to continue the academic journey, but then you like reach a point where you just um really want to see the work that you've done have an impact. Um so I uh joined the activated cyclron road programs in 2023 and then I almost immediately um got the calced award followed by NSF phase one and we're currently um waiting to hear back about NSF phase 2.

So that is basically the all that I have for you guys. Um you can see our smiling faces. Here's my team. And with that I would love to open it up for questions. Excellent. Thank you very much, Patricia. This is really cool. Yet another story of uh success here right in our backyard right here in Berkeley. That's awesome. Incredible. So, let's see if there's any questions or followup uh comments here for Patricia looking around here.

All right, I'll go ahead. I seem to be leading the charge here with u I think maybe I had too much coffee today. But um I love your enthusiasm. I love your excitement and I love that that um you know you're incorporating what your competition is and where you fit and and and how you're going to compete. I think that um so when where along the way did you develop that portion of okay I've got an idea but how do I fit that idea into what it's going to be as a company and and and can I make this work you got to understand your competition and where you fit within that where along the stages did you kind of feel comfortable like I've got the idea and the plan down

right right so let me go a little bit more into my overall like technology growth story because What was originally funding me um during my PhD was working on making the aerogel extremely transparent for window applications. So like the department of energy is really excited about the idea of aerogels being a retrofit solution for single pane windows where it's like you slap an aerogel another pane and you have instant double pane um performance. And I think for me um this is definitely part of that entrepreneurship journey because I was kind of like seeing who else is working on the transparent insulation. You could tell there are also other alumni activate companies that do a really good job with this. So it's kind of like where's my thing and what is it that I have to offer? And that's not necessarily the transparency component. like what I was offering was the fact that I was able to make a lot

of stuff very quickly and at really high quality. So the thing for me was just kind of trying to figure out where where is economy of scale really important considering this is already a high performance material. So that's kind of the mindset that I was trying to come at it with. Um, and that ended up being as I was doing kind of like general market research, the EV market overall because that was the highest growing market. That's where you really see the scale. And the comparison in terms of competition is so like um our big competitor for the US, they're called Aspen Arrow Gel and it's kind of like you look at their journey and you can actually even do like onetoone comparisons. It's like what did they do?

where are their strengths, where are their weaknesses, and what can I do to like demonstrate that my manufacturing process and my technology has something to offer that's really separate from what they're doing. So, that's a lot of where my mindset is when I'm thinking about like the aerogel and where it fits and where I can actually uh you know make my impact. M

so so chicken egg we see there like in the process we've seen like uh u you know the battery storage for vehicles and things of that nature

um was was you know kind of eclipses this last decade but just just moving forward the last few years has been about uh the energy resources going to be have to to be dedicated towards um data science and and and and these centers that are require tremendous amount of energy. So, did it shift your focus because that's a that that you're going away from like a a a relatively decent growth pattern to like an accelerate like exceptionally accelerated field. I mean, did that happen in the process? You started with one and kind of like maybe shift your focus to the other. Yeah, it it's a continuous process for me I think because since Aerogel is a platform technology like there are so many applications that as long as I'm not like distracting from the core R&D I am happy to provide it wherever it has the most value and that's really where the data center component comes into it like you see that there's value to be added there and

there's no reason not to offer that value in my opinion Okay. Uh Melanie, you had a hand up there. Did you want to comment?

Oh, yeah. I was just gonna ask Patricia um to share, you know, what your journey is looking like in the coming months because you are in the cohort that is graduating and so I know that that is is like you took time out from your moveout process to be here today. So, thank you for that.

Of course. Yeah. Uh so, we are currently moving out of the national lab. I'm part of the graduating cohort. And where we're at is basically we really wanted to in the out growing the national lab process like build out our pilot manufacturing line. So we are really excited to kind of like dedicate this space to having um like semicontinuous automation really increasing the volume of production that we can do. And um we're also excited to just like be able to fundamentally design a space to be able to fit that. So it's not kind of like shoehorning into a pre-existing space, which obviously I am extremely grateful to the Cyclutron Road program for giving us the support and the resources to be able to take off, but we're also extremely excited to like really see the growth components for the company and designing out our manufacturing process with that. So, right now we're actually uh focusing our

attention on Gate 510 in San Leandro. Um, and that seems to be like a really good spot for us. Um, and it also has like some opportunity for growth spaces. So, we've already kind of like looked at places that are closer to 10,000 square feet and we're like, "Yeah, that sounds exciting. We can fill that up with stuff."

Okay. Very good. Any other questions or comments for Patricia? Congratulations. I mean, it sounds like it's going to be a great launch.

We're very excited. All right. Things are happening right here in Berkeley. Where is Cyclron Road, by the way, Jen? Could you just uh I mean, where's the physical road that uh has that?

I can I can I was gonna say Melanie, I'm gonna let you take that one. If you head uphill on Gaye, is it Avenue or Road? Gay Road.

Gay Avenue. It's like Gaye and Loma. Like if you Yeah. If you were just heading uphill on Gaye and you pass, you know, the the UC Berkeley buildings that are on that, you know, east gate side. Um where's that north gate?

So confusing. I'm directionally impaired. Anyway, you just keep going uphill and it turns into Cyclron Road and you enter at the the main gate. And so, um, when they were trying to come up with a name for our program, the idea was, you know, there's Sand Hill Road. This is Cyclone Road.

Yeah. Right. Exactly. The famous Sand Hill Road. I get it. And sorry, Daniel, were you thinking like where where are where does Cyclone Road have its headquarters?

Well, both. Yes. I was thinking the actual road, but where are the activities? Uh,

so the fellows are all over the lab at all the facilities that they're they're working at. So, you know, yeah,

we have a we have a small headquarters in um building 62, which is pretty near the molecular foundry. And then we do have some teams that are also working out of um you know, LBL rented space down in West Berkeley um kind of the biosciences area. And then we do have teams that are embedded in in various different research areas and in user facilities.

Well, I'm getting the picture. Cyclutron Road is kind of like a state of mind. It's it's wherever you happen to be.

Make that t-shirt. Yep. There you go. Okay. Well, thanks again. Let's give a hand to all of our speakers once more to wrap up this evening's session. I was just going to quickly flash on the screen that we do have a uh uh calendar of events just for your date books. Remember, next meeting March 9th. Then we have June 8th, September 14, and November 9th. So, make sure those dates are in your calendars cuz we will have more exciting things to share with the KAG. And also get your friends and neighbors interested. You know, we're open here to have more members of the Berkeley community join us and our neighboring cities as well. and so they can contact Jan about potential to uh bring some new new groups, new energy, uh into the CAG process. So, uh with that, I think we will wrap up this evening. Thank you all very much for joining us once more and uh thank you for uh all of the great work that's

going on. It's really exciting. The lab is definitely a hub of innovation uh right here in our backyards. All right, take care everyone. Thanks everybody. Have a good night.

Cheers. Yep. Bye-bye. Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Berkeley Lab CAG Meeting - January 13, 2026"?

Ellen Ford (Main speaker (operations update)), Carla Penzon (Guest), Melanie Sunsting (Main speaker (program overview)), Patricia McNeel (Guest), Michael Brandt (Referenced leader (usual operations presenter)).

What is discussed in "Berkeley Lab CAG Meeting - January 13, 2026"?

In order: 0:00 Department of Energy, Michael Brandt, Duke Energy, Cyclron Road; 10:00 Berkeley Lab, Cyclron Road, Ellen Ford, Melanie Sunsting; 20:00 Cyclron Road, Activate, Berkeley Lab, Department of Energy; 30:00 Cyclron Road, Activate, Carla Penzon, Duke Energy; 40:00 Duke Energy; 50:00 Cyclron Road, Duke Energy, Activate, Patricia McNeel; 1:00:00 Cyclron Road, Activate, Department of Energy, Duke Energy; 1:10:00 Cyclron Road, Duke Energy, Activate.

What is mentioned in this Berkeley Lab episode?

18 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Cyclron Road, Ellen Ford, Berkeley Lab, Carla Penzon, Melanie Sunsting, Activate. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Berkeley Lab CAG Meeting - January 13, 2026"?

The episode runs 1 h 18 min; the transcript is about 13,484 words in 129 timestamped sections.

More from Berkeley Lab

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.